EDITORIALSTaxpayers
get a breakThe Pulaski County Equalization Board is a little-known outfit in downtown Little Rock where struggling property owners can appeal their ever-rising assessment and hope to catch a break. All they have to do is convince a usually sympathetic board to lower their taxes, and chances are good taxpayers will be glad they made the effort.[FULL
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Distractions
spoil a visitMitt Romney looked distracted as he shook hands with supporters after he landed in Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon. He was headed for a couple of fundraisers at the Peabody and Capital hotels, where supporters paid up to $25,000 to meet him.[FULL
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Questions for RomneyMitt Romney was supposed to lead President Obama by 10-12 points at this stage of the campaign. Instead, Romney is barely keeping up with Obama and, according to most polls, trails badly in the Electoral College, which is what counts.[FULL
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Bain invested in LR 'medical-waste' firmIf you’re wondering why Mitt Romney is distancing himself from the investment company he founded, it’s not just because he bought businesses that cost thousands of American jobs after factories closed down and work was outsourced to China and other countries.[FULL
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Principal is walking tall at JHSJacksonville High School was in awful shape last July when Henry Anderson took over the failed school in a failed school district.[FULL
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Diners go online
in fight over eateriesA food fight involving three Jacksonville restaurants has been simmering for months, if not years, and now has spilled over to Facebook, where the comments are as strong as the morning coffee.[FULL
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Levon Helm, 1940-2012 Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band who passed away Thursday at the age of 71, helped open Alltel Arena in 1999 with Ronnie Hawkins, his longtime mentor, and a fellow Band member, the organist Garth Hudson.[FULL
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You have to admire Jeff LongJeff Long, the Razorbacks’ athletic director, restored Arkan-sas’ good reputation when he announced Tuesday evening that he had fired the execrable Bobby Petrino as the head football coach.[FULL
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A memorial honors those who served in Vietnam(This column appeared on March 4, 1987, in the first issue of The Leader. We’re reprinting the column as we mark our 25th anniversary.)
Wanda Shireman of rural Jack-sonville remembers when she heard the news that her son, Paul Jr., had died in Vietnam.[FULL
TEXT]Invaders swoop
in
at sunsetOn Saturday afternoon, children and their parents were walking down the street in Beebe’s Windwood subdivision near where blackbirds roost at night on West Center Street.[FULL
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Young girl asks Santa
for a very special gift(This is a reprint of a previous Christmas column.)
When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they’d put an ad in the paper at Christmastime saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
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Shovel-ready work:
Look when you digResidents of the Sunnyside neighborhood in Jack-sonville are breathing easier now that the relocation of utility lines is nearly completed before the start of the Graham Road widening project. [FULL
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Arkansas bluesmanleft markThe great Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime guitarist, died last weekend at the age of 80. He’d been in poor health for several years — he carried an oxygen tank with him during performances — but he was a down-to-earth character who grew up in east Arkansas before he headed for Chicago some 60 years ago. The Rolling Stones will pay for his funeral. [FULL
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Eyewitness remembers
Pearl Harbor(This column about the late McLyle Zumwalt first appeared here on Dec. 9, 1989, and is reprinted to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He died in 2001.)
Most people think of retired Col. McLyle Zumwalt as one of the organizers of Pathfinders, which trains the developmentally and physically disabled in Jacksonville.[FULL
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Vietnam vet is in military
hall of fameLex (Butch) Davis of Sherwood was among the first 15 inductees into the Arkansas Military Veterans Hall of Fame at the Agora Center in Conway on Friday. This column appeared here in February 2007.
Butch Davis sat at a round table near the corner where the Singing Sergeants entertained in the big gym on Little Rock Air Force Base, which was honoring its top personnel at the annual awards banquet Saturday night.[FULL
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Colonel won’t be home for ChristmasPresident Obama said Friday all U.S. troops would leave Iraq at the end of the year.[FULL
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Designers snub
Civil War buffs Earlier this year, a couple of interior designers from Europe named Simon Davies and Tomas Cederlund came here for an episode of their show “Home Takeover” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.[FULL
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State won’t rescue cities
like schools Cities across Arkansas are going broke in the double-dip recession. Alexander down in Saline County is questioning a former bookkeeper about shortages in two city funds.[FULL
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Comparing pardons by governors (This column won first place in the Arkansas Press Association’s Better Newspaper contest. Winners were announced Saturday during the APA’s convention in Hot Springs. The column was published in The Leader on Oct. 19, 2010.).[FULL
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A Murdoch News Corp.
should hire Wendi Deng Murdoch, who jumped to her husband’s defense when a British comedian threw a shaving-cream pie at the mogul yesterday, is the one Murdoch who deserves to run the beleaguered media empire.[FULL
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Soulful sounds still amazeThe Bo-Keys are keeping the Memphis sound alive with their brash, funky music and vocal backing from great soul singers like Otis Clay, William Bell and Percy Wiggins.[FULL
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Gutsy newspaper
goes after villainsA tenacious investigative reporter, a great editor and a courageous newspaper — Nick Davies working under Alan Rusbridger at the British Guardian — helped bring down the most powerful media company in the world: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, now exposed as a criminal enterprise, with several present and former employees facing prison sentences for hacking into cell phones and computers for more than a decade. [FULL
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Sylvan Hills grad helps revive Memphis soundLast month in Overton Park in Memphis, the young trumpet player on stage left was blasting away with the Bo-Keys, an eight-man band that has revived the soulful sounds of Memphis from the 1960s and 1970s. [FULL
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High school
here ranks
with DeltaThree failing high schools down in the poverty-stricken Delta received multi-million-dollar federal grants last week. So did Jacksonville High School, the only one that’s not in the Delta. [FULL
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Arkansans praised
around the worldThe water’s receding. Most roads are open and homes are drying out. The cleanup continues as the worst flooding in decades moves south, although pockets of Arkansas remain underwater. Neighbors have helped each other cope with the disaster, although some were hurt and at least one person was killed in our area. Little Rock Air Force Base had a close brush with calamity as it survived a tornado that struck homes and several C-130s.[FULL
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Sad to see old bridge torn downScott Fryer took his family Saturday to inspect Fryer’s Ford Bridge, which had served the rural community near Solgohachia in Conway County since 1890.[FULL
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Bluesmen from Delta
passing onJoe Willie (Pinetop) Perkins, who was the oldest living bluesman and Grammy winner until he passed away Monday at 97, sat recently in a wheelchair in a little alcove just offstage at Stickys Chicken Shack in the Rivermarket District in Little Rock.[FULL
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Dictator fooledby coverage?Did Fox News goad President Obama into taking action in Libya?
Every hour until the missiles started flying, Fox showed Obama goofing off: Doing everything except his job, but there was a reason to the March madness, and it had nothing to do with basketball.[FULL
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Hate speech is protected,
court decides(The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to demonstrate at military funerals. This column about the Kansas-based group, which demonstrated in Beebe nearly five years ago, appeared on Aug. 2, 2006.)
Members of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., were again busy this week picketing funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, but lawsuits filed by families who have lost their loved ones could stop the church group from taunting grieving relatives. [FULL
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Ex-Stax chief still has soul Al Bell, the former Stax Records executive, is back in the spotlight with a new Web site, All Bell Presents American Soul Music, where you can hear classic Stax artists and new soul singers who are keeping the Memphis sound alive. [FULL
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Minihan: No break
for wing since 9/11 Col. Mike Minihan, commander of the 19th Airlift Wing, sent off 40 airmen and a couple of C-130s into combat before the storm hit last weekend. [FULL
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From this poor little girl, special request for Santa (This is a reprint of a previous Christmas column.)
When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they’d put an ad in the paper at Christmastime, saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
TEXT]

Base could depend on Snyder as real friend Rep. Vic Snyder, a Democrat who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, is getting some heat from Republicans for wasting time on the House floor to praise this community’s support of Little Rock Air Force Base. [FULL
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Panama president
ex-UofA roommateJohn Mason, a Jacksonville real estate broker, was in Fayetteville with his wife Ien for homecoming weekend on Oct. 30, when the Razorbacks played Vanderbilt. [FULL
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Our error given wide circulationWe’ve received lots of calls, comments and complaints over an error in Wednesday’s paper about a Christmas program in Cabot. [FULL
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Comparing pardons
by governorDid you see Gov. Beebe’s latest list of pardons? Last week, he announced his intent to pardon a handful of small-time criminals, emphasis on small-time. [FULL
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POWs recall their
World War ordealThe former POWs who were shot down over Romania during the Second World War arrived at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History in their tour bus a little after 11 a.m. Thursday. [FULL
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Annexation plan: Many in area say they're against itPeople who live north of Jacksonville near Hwy. 67/167 met at a church Monday evening to fight the city’s plan to annex the area.[FULL
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Lighthouse plans to build middle and high schoolsThe headline in Saturday’s Leader: “Cabot schools about to hit 10,000.”[FULL
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J’Accuse: Smearing
of generalAir Force Gen. John D. Lavelle, who died more than 30 years ago, after he was falsely accused of insubordination, is a four-star general again.[FULL
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Petraeus salutes
camp liberators It was 65 years ago Monday that Beryl Wolfson helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in southeastern Germany.[FULL
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Marker recalls fire at Twist There's finally a marker honoring B.B. King in Twist in Cross County, where the great blues singer escaped from a fire at nightclub with his guitar and named it Lucille.[FULL
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Justice Jim fought tough final battle Arkansas bloggers were the first with the news of Justice Jim Johnson’s suicide over the weekend. The local TV news on Sunday ignored his passing, probably because no one in the newsroom knew who he was.[FULL
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Cabot man in raidon POW camp in 1970 Mst. Sgt. Paul Poole, who helped to liberate Americans from a Vietnamese prison camp, died last week.[FULL
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Trial could get Muhammad
his death wishLast June, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad killed a soldier from Conway and injured another soldier from Jacksonville in front of a recruiting station in Little Rock.[FULL
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What a little girl asked
from Santa When my friend Jack Sallee was with the Jaycees in Fayetteville, they'd put an ad in the paper at Christmastime, saying that for $2 you could have Santa come to your place. [FULL
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Tuskegee legend
at holiday reception A tall elderly man stood in a far corner in a large banquet room at Little Rock Air Force Base on Sunday afternoon during the holiday reception hosted by the wing commanders. [FULL
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Gas shut off
as hospital bills pile upA couple in Beebe have been without heat for several months after the natural-gas company took out their meter because they were not paying their bills.[FULL
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Huckabee our worst governor?Who is Arkansas’ worst governor? Is it Orval Faubus, who defied federal authorities i in 1957, when he wouldn’t allow nine black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock? He brought shame and ridicule on the whole state, but at least no one was killed. Or is Mike Huckabee our worst governor ever?
[FULL
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For complete news coverage, buy The Leader today!

August 29, 2012

Dozens of CV-22 Osprey, UA-28s and C-130s from 1st Special Operations Wing, Hurlburt Field, Fla., sit on the flightline with aircraft from Little Rock Rock Air Force Base on Monday. Airmen and aircraft were evacuated from Hurlburt Field and Keesler AFB, Miss., before Hurricane Isaac approached the Gulf Coast.
Units find shelter as hurricane moves inIN SHORT: Several hurricane-evacuation planes from Florida and Mississippi are flown to air base seeking refuge from the storm. [FULL TEXT]

New director of State Police is from Austin IN SHORT: Police Chief John Staley calls Witt an outstanding trooper who gets involved in solving local criminal cases. [FULL TEXT]

Silver Haired Legislators serve in the state Capitol IN SHORT: Several from area represented at a special session. [FULL TEXT]

Cabot quarterback Kason Kimbrell keeps on the option play during the Panthers 28-0 win over Jacksonville.

Jackrabbits happy to be playing Star City at homeIN SHORT: The opponent is the same, but not the venue for LHS’s first game. [FULL TEXT]

IN THIS ISSUESubscribe to The Leader for these and other stories found in the printed edition: • Old cemetery cleanup a success
• School board takes action
• Air show to draw crowds
• AETN to showcase young artists' work
• Airmen relocate C-130 to education center
• Lisa Academy adds 12th grade
• Power struggle over power companies
• 189th AW colonel who made history is retiring
• Work on new headquarters on track
• Pageant set for Sept. 29
• Woman dies in hit and run
• Beebe hunts for economic head
• Department is hiring in Sherwood
• Despite legal fight, school district doing well
• Arnold Drive garners kudos
• West nile cases are on the rise

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